Neither warm friends nor sworn enemies, the United States and China are stuck with each other. One is the world’s largest economy and strategic superpower. The other is vying for the first title and a share of the second.

Relations between the world’s largest and next largest economies are tense but stable. Such “great power transitions" are supposed to end in tears. One is reluctant to surrender, the other impatient to succeed.

Policymakers in Washington and Beijing are acutely aware of the risks, and anxious to find a better way to manage China’s rise alongside whatever is happening to America.

Australia, with traditional ties to Washington and growing commercial ties to China, has a strong interest in this succeeding. It does not want to be forced to choose.

As long as
Barack Obama
and Xi Jinping – the guardians of the relationship for the coming years – keep their heads, we won’t have to. Defeated Republican presidential candidate
Mitt Romney
appeared to lose his, with his threats to label China a currency manipulator.

There are plenty of points of friction to keep the leaders on their toes.

Obama and Xi seemed to get on well when Xi visited the US last February. However, tension was never far away. Xi insisted Washington must respect the interests and concerns of China – something that should not need to be said. The next day, Obama took aim at China’s below-the-belt trading practices at a plant in Wisconsin owned by Master Lock, which he praised for repatriating about 100 “union" jobs from China.

The US’s trade deficit with China – $US295 billion last year – grates on US officials. They say China tilts the playing field by keeping its currency low, illegally subsidising exports, stealing intellectual property, and erecting hidden barriers to imports. But they only grudgingly recognise progress on China’s part.

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The US government is meant to be easing tough limits on Chinese access to US technology. But it has blocked China’s largest telecoms equipment company, Huawei, from buying high-tech companies or bidding for the biggest network contracts, and another company from operating a wind farm near a US military base.

Beijing’s expanding territorial claims are another point of friction. A few months before Xi’s US visit, Obama had announced a deployment of US Marines to Darwin as part of a “pivot" to Asia, and marshalled opposition to China’s claims to disputed South China Sea islands at the East Asian Summit in Bali.

Washington needs Beijing’s help in taming North Korea, Iran and Syria. It needs Beijing to be a stable holder of US debt, and it wants China to open its doors to more US exports to help grow an economy that cannot borrow much more. Beijing wants the US to buy its goods without debauching its currency, which will require expanded access to Chinese markets.

The Middle East is a tinderbox, Europe and Japan are in deep trouble. Obama and Xi have no option but to continue their careful dance, with its occasional squabbles.